Stand alone safe boxes (also known simply as “safes”) that protect documents, currency, and valuables from fire and theft are now common in most businesses and many homes as well. Safes typically are constructed of a thick metal plates that form an inner compartment for housing the valuables. A door provides access to the inner compartment and a locking mechanism secures the door to the housing to prevent unauthorized entry into the safe interior. The locking mechanism is typically retaining rods that project from the door along inner surfaces into apertures on adjoining surfaces or vice versa. The rods may be maneuvered mechanically, hydraulically, electrically, or by other means, but are traditionally policed by a security mechanism built into the safe door. The security mechanism may be triggered by a numeric or alphanumeric code, a magnetic strip, a simple key, or any other means for storing a code or combination. The triggering device, such as a key or combination, permits the retaining rods to be withdrawn from the outside of the safe via a handle, thereby allowing access to the safe's interior. Safes come in many sizes and shapes, including floor safes, wall safes, stand-alone safes, and variations thereof.
One essential feature of a safe for many businesses and home security purposes is that the safe be capable of protecting its contents in the event of a fire. Because of the intense heat generated in a home or business fire, however, the specifications required to certify a safe for an hour in a standard fire are rigorous and tend to yield safes constructed of steel or lead to withstand the high temperatures. Safes tend to resemble thick-walled boxes of limited physical appeal as function dictates design over form. The thick walls are needed, however, to protect the contents of the safe although this also led to heavy, unwieldy device. The weight characteristics of many safes limited the practical size that these safes could reasonably be constructed for home and small business use since these devices may need to be moved from time to time. Because consumers are always looking for bigger and lighter safes having a more pleasing appearance, the prior art did not satisfy customer demand to its fullest extent.
One of the most important feature of a safe that customers look for is its resistance to break-in. Because valuables and other important documents are traditionally stored in safes, they are always targets for thieves who try to pilfer the safe's contents. The very nature of the safe's construction, namely five walls and a door, emphasize the achilles heel of most safes is the juncture of the door with the adjoining walls. In particular, a would be thief who is without the access code required to open the safe without disabling it will tend not to attempt to penetrate the fixed walls. Rather, access can most easily be obtained by disabling an exposed hinge or coupling that connects the safe door to the housing. Because hinges are outside the safe and can be mechanically, chemically, or thermally disabled, the hinge is the focus of most safe break-ins. This is frustrating to safe owners and builders, who take great measures to provide sturdy, impenetrable walls and yet the strongest of safes can be defeated by simply disengaging the associated hinge member.
Unfortunately, in traditional safe design the hinge is positioned on the exterior of the safe and therefore exposed to mechanical or blunt force that can damage the hinge. In this way, thieves can often defeat the safe's theft protection characteristics by attacking the hinge which in turn allows the thief to gain access to the contents of the safe. The exposure of the safe door hinge prevents most prior art safes from being completely effective against break-in. The present inventor sought to eliminate the aforementioned shortcomings by using a unique plastic safe design that includes a concealed hinge and therefore resists exposure to break-in via the hinge-housing coupling.